Suite for Strings

i) Three Jigs
ii) Neil Gow’s Lament on the Death of his Second Wife
iii) Finale

“Why can’t you just write a nice tune instead of all that modern stuff.”  Most composers will recognise the question, sometimes directly, and frequently implied.  Suite for Strings is quite different from most of my music in that it is full of “nice” tunes. I was teaching a folk music unit at school and my pupils were making arrangements of traditional tunes.  Movements 1 & 2 came out of examples I wrote for these classes.  The harder third movement was added for a performance by Philomusica who needed a more technically challenging finale.  All the movements have roots going back to my school and undergraduate years, when I regularly arranged for and played in a couple of Ceilidh bands.

The materials are a mixture of traditional Scottish/Irish tunes and original tunes written in a neo-celtic[!?!] style. The first two jigs in movement 1 are harmonised using syncopated added note chords (jazzy chords) on the accompanying instruments.  The third jig is in 9/8 and has some interesting cross rhythms in the accompaniment.

Movement 2 is a simple setting of a beautiful Neil Gow lament.

Whilst the first two movements consist mainly of traditional material, the last movement has only one traditional reel and the rest of the material is original, mostly quirky reels that occasionally lose or gain a beat here or there.  In particular, listen out for a wayward and tricky viola tune.

Suite for Strings is proving to be just about my most popular piece and is kind of my Bolero (Ravel always held that his most widely played piece was not really his true voice).  None-the-less I am kind of fond of this piece and enjoyed writing a fun piece just as much as doing my more serious stuff.